


on the wires

by orphan_account



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Gen, Post 7x19
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:28:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29860869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Donna drives Josh to the airport, mostly because she doesn’t trust the bags under his eyes and his five o’clock shadow to do it.
Relationships: Joey Lucas/Donna Moss, Josh Lyman & Donna Moss, Josh Lyman/Sam Seaborn
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	on the wires

Donna drives Josh to the airport, mostly because she doesn’t trust the bags under his eyes and his five o’clock shadow to do it. It’s an overcast day, with the sun peeking through at odd intervals every so often. They get to Dulles somewhere after six, and she keeps up a stream of banter that he occasionally responds to with him cocking his head and looking like he’s trying to formulate a reply and failing. He hasn’t been sleeping and it’s as clear as day on his face; she’s kind of fluent in all these sorts of things, with the assistant thing and all, but also because she knows about picking apart the knots that emotions can get you into.

The airport’s slow and quiet, and when they get to the terminal, where she’s going back and he’s going away, she’s saying, “So, here’s the deal. No work talk.”

Josh hikes his backpack up his shoulder before saying, “I feel like the general idea of the whole going away thing made that pretty clear, Donna.” He looks like he’s going to smile, but he doesn’t.

“I’m serious,” Donna notes, and it comes our less chiding and more worried. She’s worried, been worried, but there've been eight million other things that also fit into that category, and it’s only really now when she’s left all of that back at her office in the EEOB that she can say it. “You get your R&R, and I don’t know, have a check-in, get yourself back to -” she wants to say _normal_ , but it’s not that. They’ve been in a new normal for three weeks, and that’s including election night and all that had happened. She thinks of Annabeth’s tear-stricken face at the hospital, the way Josh had looked like everything had crumbled right before him, ash at his feet. 

Donna also thinks of the swoop and absolute joy of seeing the forecast on NBC, the realization that they’d won, the way that she’d hugged Josh and he’d hugged her back, whooping in her ear so loud that she couldn’t be bothered to care. She’s dealing - she’s trying, anyway, with work in her left hand, and the string of texts that bridge her and Joey on her right, and she’d like to think she’s doing alright. And of course, there’s Sam, Sam who she can call from down the hallway instead of from across the country, which makes her feel just a bit more at ease with everything.

Anyway. She turns to Josh, looks at the exhaustion painted on his face, and hopes that he gets that. Donna also knows that maybe some of that has already happened with Sam here, mostly because the whole Josh-and-Sam thing is something she’s seen and hasn’t seen, and she thinks that if anything, Josh’ll find some insight about that. Or Sam will. She hopes, anyway.

“Josh, I -” Donna pauses. “Just. You know, I know you’re immune to understanding what relaxing is -”

“Hey,” he interjects, but it’s too fond and weathered with their usual rhythms for her to do anything else but roll her eyes. 

“ _But_ ,” she emphasizes, holds up a finger. “Entertain the possibility. Seize the day. Or days. Avoid your inbox and don’t call me at midnight asking for updates.”

“Midnight?” he says. “I’d think more like three AM. The craziest stuff happens at three AM.”

“That’s crap and you know it,” Donna retorts, but her voice softens. 

“Donna,” Josh says, and it’s quieter, like the words are crawling out, bit by bit. “I - thanks.” Donna knows he means more than that the thirty-minute drive. 

“Anytime,” she says. And then for the hell of it: “Anytime _but_ midnight.”

“What is it with you and midnight?” he replies, mouth flicking up on one side, half-dimpled. “Aren’t you used to the - I don’t know - hours? I mean you’re telling me that you’ve never texted Joey at midnight because of the whole time zone thing?”

Donna replies, hand settling on the crook of her elbow, “We have a system,” and the thought of it, her and Joey, makes her stomach turn in pirouettes, the good kind. She loves Joey and her mind and the way she’ll give the kind of grin that says a million things, and Donna's surprised about how easy all of it is. How easy it is to know that there’s Joey Lucas in California thinking about her, and there’s Donna in DC, doing just the same. She wants Josh to get that; she wants Sam to get that, and she loves them both, but they’re both pretty bad at seeing the writing on the wall, especially if they aren’t looking at the wall in the first place.

“A system?”

“A system, Josh, and you’re avoiding the point,” she notes. “Maybe you could get some pictures? The views of the ocean are really great, from what the Internet says.” This may or may not be because of her looking at TripAdvisor out of boredom late last night when she probably should have been thinking about Chief-of-Staff-to-the-First-Lady things, but she spends approximately ninety percent of her days doing that. Donna loves it, but the times where's there's finally time to look up that random thing or read a book or sleep in more than thirty-minute chunks (or in this case, browse HD picturesque views of Hawaii) have always spoken to her.

“And give you motivation for - “ he actually huffs out a laugh, a little bit like what she remembers from eight years ago. It makes her lips twitch in a smile. 

“Motivation for?”

“Commentary! Commentary, Donna,” Josh replies, punctuating his words with a gesture. “I mean, what else am I going to hear when I get pictures of me looking like a lobster or something?”

“Sunscreen ads. Joey can help,” she replies, too pointed for it to be not funny, and then she reaches over and hugs him and squeezes once before letting go. She clasps one of his hands before letting it drop; it’s the hand with the scar, she remembers, bites her lips against the twinge of something in her heart, the memories of the ER, the sterile smell, and the quiet of it all. The only other time Donna’s thought about that was Gaza, and her leg aches, just for a moment. She doesn’t think of things in before and after, because everything is too muddled for it to be like that, but if she had to, Donna would think of the moment she’d woken up about the explosion and everything was too bright and lopsided and horrible for her to perceive. 

There’s a boarding call that jolts her out of thought, and it looks like Josh realizes it too. 

“I guess that’s me,” he says, a little ruefully. “See you in a week.”

And before he can say goodbye, Donna says, “You know, I don’t think Sam would mind you calling at midnight, if you wanted to call.” 

He actually stops and stares, and she shrugs, casual, puts her hands in the pockets of her puffy coat, still stinging with the cold. “He’s a morning person.”

“Donna,” Josh replies, long-suffering but near-hopeful, and that’s when she knows he will. 

“No work talk,” she reiterates, then pecks him on the cheek, and claps her hands on his shoulders. “Get sunburned and sleep in and send me all the ocean pictures. I need a new screensaver, Joshua.”

“Alright,” Josh says, eyebrows raised, grinning for real this time, before Donna says, "See you on Saturday," and lets him go.


End file.
